Collecting a piece of today, which will never happen again
The phrase "today only happens once" can help me stay present and feel grateful. For example, it's the evening of December 17, 2024, and I'll never get this day back. I went on a long run in the rain, I ate coconut-tomato soup, I worked at the email factory, I had a relationship check-in. I'm glad I have this little digital record of these experiences.
On my run today I was thinking about "today only happens once" in the context of in our hands cards. Specifically, I was thinking about what it would be like to add a specific date of production to each card. Some general ideas around this:
- Right now the stamp on the card says "in our hands cards," the card number, the recipient charity, the amount donated, and the website. What would adding a specific date of production look like?
- Incorporating a date of production into all cards and physical items might be a way of making the project more meaningful to me. It would make IOHC more of a scrapbook of creative projects. Already, I'm really excited about the strong sense of place and people that IOHC will embody: recording and sharing information about where I got each bit of material that comprises the card. A date might be a fun way of adding to that, and of organizing the site.
- I also expect that I'd value memory cues. Others may too. If a card is recorded as being from particular day it can act like a journal--it can help recall memories.
There were a few things that happened that led to this idea:
- Yesterday evening there were two people, together, drawing and painting in little notebooks at the cafe. I didn't muster up the vulnerability to ask them about it but wow I was curious. I did see that one of their notebooks had little things pasted into it on one side, like a sticker or some sort of label. The person's little art kit even had a UHU glue stick in it, presumably for this purpose!
- In the movie Perfect Days, the protagonist is a toilet caretaker. He eats his packed lunch every day in a park partially shaded by maple trees (I think they're maples). Every day he snaps a polaroid pointing up at the trees. Every day he then places this developed polaroid in a small container labelled with that month and year, and there are scores of these containers in his closet. (He also grows maple saplings under grow lights in his home).
- Kate Bingamin-Burt's "office"
- Cycling Cindy's handmade and hand-dyed embroidery. These aren't specific to a particular date, but they have a very strong sense of place: some of them seem to be named after the place they were made. And I'd expect that she does lots of the fabric dying (and dye creation) at her home in Hungary.
- My dream of while bike travelling in 2025 to make one little card or block print every day of the trip, but 2 instances of that card or print: to keep one, and give the other away. I'm going to do this!
- I made a little quick collage back in the summer of the bits and pieces of paper that accumulated over July 2024 -- a sticker, a prescription receipt, a note, a clothing tag. It's still on our fridge because it brought a surprising amount of pleasure to both bell and I.